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SAS Enterprise Miner vs Starburst Galaxy comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

SAS Enterprise Miner
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
20th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (7th)
Starburst Galaxy
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
7th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
2.6
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of SAS Enterprise Miner is 2.5%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Galaxy is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Starburst Galaxy1.5%
SAS Enterprise Miner2.5%
Other96.0%
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1352853 - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive Head of analytics at a retailer with 5,001-10,000 employees
A stable product that is easy to deploy and can be used for structured and unstructured data mining
We use the solution for predictive analytics to do structured and unstructured data mining I like the way the product visually shows the data pipeline. The product must provide better integration with cloud-native technologies. I have been using the solution for 20 years. The product is very…
Pedromachado Ventura - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Analyst at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Unified SQL layer has streamlined access to distributed historical data for analytics and reporting
One area that I think could be improved is the experience when performance issues occur. When a query is slow, it is not always immediately obvious to me whether the bottleneck comes from Starburst Galaxy itself, the underlying data source, the query design, or the reporting tool. Better visibility into query performance and easier diagnostics for non-administrators would be useful. Another potential improvement would be enhancing the experience with BI tools to make it more seamless. I work a lot with Power BI, and when you are working with larger data sets, performance can sometimes depend on several different layers. Having more visibility into what is happening between the BI tool, Starburst Galaxy, and the underlying source would be helpful. I also think onboarding could be a little more accessible for analysts. There is good technical documentation, but sometimes I just need to understand the best way to approach a common use case without diving too deep into the platform architecture. The main improvement would be troubleshooting. I have not used the AI capabilities extensively, so I cannot give a detailed assessment. I am not sure if my organization has the full capabilities of Starburst Galaxy, but I think adding AI on top of the data layer is interesting, especially if it can help users discover data, understand data sets, and interact with them more naturally. For governance and security, one of the strengths of Starburst Galaxy is that you can centralize access to data while still controlling what different users are allowed to see. Role-based access, fine-grained permissions, and data masking are important because giving people easier access to data should not mean giving everyone access to everything. I think that is even more important than any AI capabilities that are introduced. If you do introduce AI, I think it should respect exactly the same data permissions and governance rules as the user that is accessing the data.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is very good for data mining or any mining issues."
"I like the way the product visually shows the data pipeline."
"It enables statistical modeling of data using Base SAS (another product from the same vendor) as the backbone."
"SAS internal support is very qualified and if we have any issues, we contact them and trust that they can help."
"Performance is excellent."
"Overall it is a good solution."
"Most of the features, especially on the data analysis tool pack, are really good. The way they do clustering and output is great. You can do fairly elaborate outputs. The results, the ensembles, all of these, are fantastic."
"The technical support is very good."
"I am now able to answer questions in a couple of minutes that would otherwise take hours or days of time for my data engineering teams."
"Starburst on Trino, combined with our SQL-native data transformation tool SQLMesh, has delivered anywhere from a two to five times improvement in compute performance across our transformation DAG."
"The most fundamental feature is the query engine, which is much faster than any of the competitors; Starburst is able to finish most queries within 10 seconds, which is especially important for many non-technical employees."
"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."
"The main positive impact Starburst Galaxy has made is making data more accessible for analytics and reporting."
"Starburst Galaxy has significantly improved our data architecture flexibility and performance management by solving cross-database query challenges and enabling us to utilize iceberg tables externally across our entire data ecosystem."
"Starburst has provided us with virtually guaranteed performance on complex queries across datasets that are in the tens of gigabytes which complete in seconds."
"Starburst Galaxy serves as our primary SQL-based data processing engine, a strategic decision driven by its seamless integration with our AWS cloud infrastructure and its ability to deliver high performance with low-latency responses."
 

Cons

"Plus it is prohibitively expensive and is not available with perpetual licensing."
"The solution needs an easier interface for the user. The user experience isn't so easy for our clients."
"We really don't like the protocols the solution offers. The solution is much more complex than other options."
"The visualization of the models is not very attractive, so the graphics should be improved."
"The stability isn't perfect. We have issues with accuracy in some AI forecasting areas, and the accuracy is not as good as the clients need it to be."
"Virtualization could be much better."
"The license is really expensive. This solution is for large corporations because not everybody can afford it."
"Technical support could be improved."
"Cluster startup time is another pain point, typically 3 to 5 minutes, which is not the worst with proper planning but can be annoying for ad-hoc work."
"There is still room for improved usability and diagnostics, especially for users who are not platform specialists."
"I think there are areas of improvement with respect to AI adaptability, and also in general, the amount of connectors working with other tools are areas where it can be expanded."
"The most persistent issue is the cluster spin-up time."
"Multi-tenancy could be improved. In order to have multiple environments for SSO, we maintain multiple tenants that are connected to different AWS accounts via the Marketplace."
"<p>Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose.</p>"
"Cluster startup time can be slow, sometimes taking over a minute."
"I would like to see better alerting integrations for failures and errors in scheduled tasks and maintenance jobs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is for large corporations because not everybody can afford it."
"The solution is expensive for an individual, but for an enterprise/institution (purchasing bulk licenses), it is not a high price for the use that will come from it."
"The solution must improve its licensing models."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
9%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Starburst Galaxy?
I recommend experimenting with different cluster sizes to determine what works best for your particular use case.
What needs improvement with Starburst Galaxy?
One area that I think could be improved is the experience when performance issues occur. When a query is slow, it is not always immediately obvious to me whether the bottleneck comes from Starburst...
What is your primary use case for Starburst Galaxy?
I have mainly used Starburst Galaxy as a query and access layer for analytical data, as my current work involves dealing with data stored across different platforms, including Hive and SingleStore....
 

Also Known As

Enterprise Miner
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Generali Hellas, Gitanjali Group, Gloucestershire Constabulary, GS Home Shopping, HealthPartners, IAG New Zealand, iJET, Invacare
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Find out what your peers are saying about SAS Enterprise Miner vs. Starburst Galaxy and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.